Zcash (ZEC) is the hot new altcoin this fall. Zcash aims to bring complete privacy to digital currency transactions.
“Zcash offers total payment confidentiality, while still maintaining a decentralized network using a public blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin, Zcash transactions automatically hide the sender, recipient, and value of all transactions on the blockchain. Only those with the correct view key can see the contents. Users have complete control and can opt-in to provide others with their view key at their discretion.” [z.cash]
The Zcash genesis block is scheduled to launch on October 28th. After the astonishing rise of Monero over the past few weeks, many traders are equally bullish on Zcash.
ZEC coins will be distributed by mining and earning the block reward; there will be no Initial Coin Offering. As a result, the initial supply of ZEC coins will be limited.
Most traders want economic exposure to ZEC rather than buying, holding, and storing ZEC itself. Futures contracts allow traders to gain long or short exposure without ever touching ZEC.
Zcash funded development partially by pre-selling ZEC coins to investors. A portion of each block reward will be given to initial investors for a period of time. The spot market will be quite illiquid until enough blocks have been mined, and block rewards earned. Initial investors can forward sell their allotment of ZEC by selling futures contracts.
BitMEX is committed to providing price discovery for new and promising digital currencies. We are proud to be the first exchange to allow trading of any kind for ZEC/XBT. The BitMEX Zcash / Bitcoin futures contracts allow traders to go long or short with leverage on the ZEC/XBT exchange rate.
Product Details:
Symbol: ZECZ16
Underlying: ZEC/XBT
Contract Value: 1 ZEC
Quote Currency: XBT
Expiry Date: 30 December 2016 12:00 UTC
Settlement Currency: Margin and PNL are denominated in Bitcoin
Leverage: 2x
Given that ZEC/XBT has not begun trading on any spot market, we do not know which exchange will have the most liquid market. We will make an announcement in early November about which spot exchange will be used for the settlement price.